About Lobbywatcher.

The federal government is starting to put and more data online, but it's not very good at it. In my work as a journalist covering Parliament Hill, I found I was spending a lot time checking different database and running cumbersome searches to find the most recent information.

To make it easier to check regularly on certain government data, I created a series of web pages to repackage the data in a more useful way.These are now combined on lobbywatcher.ca.

Lobbywatcher is in no way affiliated with the Government of Canada. As all the data is extracted as-is from government websites, Lobbywatcher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in the original data.

Lobbyist contacts

These data are extracted from the communication reports lobbyists are required to file with the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying within 30 days of contact with a public-office holder. The data presented here include only communications with cabinet ministers, senators and members of parliament. Listing of cabinet contacts are updated hourly. Senate and MP listings are updated three times a day.

Federal Court

The Courts Administration service provides a searchable database of Federal Court of Canada docket data, but no where does it provide a list of the most-recently filed applications. As a journalist, I'm always interested in finding out what's new in court, so I started listing the cases in reverse chronological hour. These listings updated every 15 minutes.

Orders-in-council

These are orders made by the federal cabinet. They are listed in the Privy Council Office's database but I find the service a bit clumsy as it displays only five listings at a time and requires a click-through to see the actual order-in-council text. I've included these on lobbywatcher.ca for convenience. These listings updated hourly.

Ministerial staff changes

Staff listings published on GEDS, the federal government phone book, are compared and when there's a change, it is listed here. These listings track new arrivals, staff departures and position changes within the major ministrial offices. WARNING: Listings do not necessarily indicate the departure of a staff member. Occassional reformating of record GEDS makes can sometimes trigger updates. This service was previously known as MINOtaur. These listings updated hourly.

Help keep Lobbywatcher free

I assembled Lobbywatcher on my own time and on my own dime, running on rented server space. If you find Lobbywatcher useful and would like to help defray the costs, please consider a donation via PayPal.

Thanks,

Glen McGregor